


put all your hope in this bell (somehow you thought we'd be there)

by sammyspreadyourwings



Series: Rock Around the October (Rocktober 2020) [16]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward first meeting, Confusion, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Protective John Deacon, Scars, Some Humor, Worried John Deacon, waking up in a different universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyspreadyourwings/pseuds/sammyspreadyourwings
Summary: John wakes up after falling asleep with his family and his family isn't there. Apparently, wherever it is he has woken up in, he doesn't have his family.
Relationships: John Deacon/Brian May
Series: Rock Around the October (Rocktober 2020) [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952968
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	put all your hope in this bell (somehow you thought we'd be there)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Waking up in a different universe
> 
> I don't honestly know, but I like it!

The first thing John wonders when he wakes up with a splitting migraine is what the hell had he drank last night. He remembers tucking in his son and kissing his daughter on the head (already asleep and fears the wrath of a woken infant) before climbing into bed next to Brian – then nothing. John knows he must have fallen asleep listening to that weird mewl Brian does when he gets disturbed but not woken.

John pries his eyes open dropping his arm over where Brian’s waist should be. He scrunches his nose and sits up, it’s rare for Brian to be awake before him especially before 10:00 am. He checks his phone – weird it doesn’t have that crack from when his son had a tantrum with it in his grasp. And Brian isn’t his background, instead of it is some cat lounging in the sun. He shakes his head before swiping through his contacts – Brian had a terrible memory when it came to his phone and they’ve had to change his number so many times over the year – but Brian’s name isn’t there.

He puts the phone in his jumper pouch before wandering through the house -and his frown deepens, this isn’t his house. It is too clean between children’s toys and Brian’s habit of leaving things everywhere John doesn’t think he has seen the floor in four years. Now the walls are too white and there aren’t baby latches on the low cabinets. John picks up his speed darting down the steps (no baby gate) and to the living room (clean).

Instead of the rustic country house he had inherited from his grandfather, he is staring over the London skyline, the wall entirely windows. John steps back.

“Brian!” He yells.

“Brian, baby, answer me!” John turns on his heel and runs through the house, flinging open doors and not tripping once. He rounds around the last corner which leads to the kitchen. But there is no trace of Brian anywhere in the house.

John darts back to the living room, pushing a hand through his hair trying to remember Brian’s most recent phone number. Why can’t he remember it? He remembers the first number Brian ever had, back when they first met but he can’t remember his husband of six year’s phone number. Instead, he looks for a familiar name in the list of contacts.

_Roger Taylor._

Thank god, John thinks. When he didn’t see Freddie’s name he had started to panic again.

“Taylor, D.D.S,” Roger’s whiney voice comes in, strangely low.

John tilts his head, “D.D.S. what are you on about?”

“Er? I’m sorry?” Roger asks, “my secretary stepped away and I don’t have a patient so I thought… can I help you?”

“Can you tell me where Brian is?”

“Can you tell me who this is?”

“Roger – Christ – It’s John Deacon.”

“John? Shouldn’t you be at work? Is that root canal giving you any trouble I can fit you in today –”

Roger is taking that dentist bit a little too far, John thinks but he isn’t in the mood because he doesn’t know where his husband or kids are.

“ _Brian,_ my husband, where is he?”

“Husband? Mr. Deacon, you said that you were single on the paperwork.”

John stares at the far wall, it has some cheap mass-produced art hanging on it before he clears his throat, “sorry. Mistaken.”

He hangs up before Roger could say anything else. John looks down at his hand. There isn’t a wedding band – or even a band saying that he had been married. Except, John narrows his eyes, there is a scar on the back of his hand. It is faint, healed over the years, but in the fluorescent lighting, the pale skin is easy to see.

And despite how much it hurt when he got it, it makes him smile. It hadn’t been Brian’s fault – walking into the engineering lab looking for the stolen anatomy model (why the engineering and physics department fought over the biology’s discarded property he _never_ found out) while John was welding something. The burn hadn’t been bad either but Brian had flitted around him until John accepted the offer to go to the emergency room.

It had been a weird first date – and it wasn’t a date truly, but John refuses to let Brian’s “let me take you out again, as an apology” go. He runs a hand down his face. John knows he has to find Brian, and he knows Brian is out there because the scar is still here, and he might not know why they aren’t married or why they don’t have a house full of the noise of young children – but Roger is around so Freddie must be too.

And hopefully, before he finds this version of Brian, he will wake up from this dream and he will have his husband rolling over to nuzzle against him and to beg off getting the children up. John rubs his thumb down the scar.

**Author's Note:**

> As always leave your thoughts and comments below or come talk to me on tumblr!


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